Bill heightens fight over electronic signs

by Howard Fischer - Feb. 23, 2012 07:26 AMCapitol Media Services

State lawmakers are in the middle of a pitched battle between the billboard industry and astronomers.

Legislation making its way through the House seeks to overturn a ruling last year by the state Court of Appeals, which concluded that state law does not authorize internally illuminated full-color billboards and their changeable messages that have popped up over the past few years along major roads.

The 1958 federal Highway Beautification Act and its state counterpart, approved a dozen years later, prohibit the digital billboards along roads funded at least in part with federal and state dollars.

Rep. Bob Robson, R-Chandler, who is sponsoring the current measure, said all it does is restore the law to what he said everyone assumed it had been.

But Mark Mayer, who represents Scenic Arizona, said that's not true, which is why he said the lawsuit was filed in the first place. And a series of representatives from the astronomy industry argued that allowing these signs to remain and proliferate would undermine the $1.2 billion investment in the state and the $250 million it generates in grants and funds from out of state.

Robson said cities and counties remain free to impose their own restrictions on these type of signs or ban them outright. That was enough to persuade a majority of the Government Committee to approve the legislation earlier this month.

But opposition still remains. And Wendy Briggs, lobbyist for Clear Channel Communications, said her industry is willing to consider compromises.

Briggs contends that the judges got it wrong. And she also said her company and others who have erected 70 of those illuminated signs, mostly in metro Phoenix, have followed all the proper procedures, including getting permits from applicable state and local officials.

She also said there are inherent benefits to these changeable signs, including the ability to tell passing motorists about people wanted for kidnapping and other crimes.

But Gene Gardner, a project administrator for the Smithsonian Institution working at the Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona, told lawmakers that they need to consider the fallout from these signs.

Gardner said work is under way to land funding for the next generation of gamma-ray astronomy, a $130 million project with a $10 million annual operating budget.

"Unfortunately, with some legislation like this, it's just enough to scare away astronomers," he said, calling the digital billboards "a killer for astronomy."

And Gardner said there is tremendous competition for grants, with Arizona already having lost projects to Utah and Colorado.

Elizabeth Alvarez, assistant to the director at Kitt Peak National Observatory, said part of what makes the billboards so problematic is that the light is emitted horizontally. She said that creates all sorts of problems for astronomers who rely on dark skies.

Briggs, however, said the signs emit less light pollution than traditional billboards, which are illuminated from below, shining their lights upward, the practice in much of the industry. She said that the signs are turned off nightly at 11 p.m.

"Most astronomy is done in the middle of the night," she said.

Rep. David Gowan, R-Sierra Vista, said he sees no need for a statewide ban as long as the legislation does not pre-empt local rules.

"Now we can go to the local level to make sure the rural regions, if need be, are taken care of for the rights of the astronomers," he said.

But Rep. Eric Meyer, D-Paradise Valley, said that ignores how far light pollution can spread.

Meyer also said that, given the expense of operating a telescope, telling astronomers they are free to work after midnight is not an answer, because it makes the devices useless for part of the night.

Even some of the lawmakers who have so far supported House Bill 2757 say they want changes. That includes Rep. Steve Urie, R-Gilbert, who said the legislation needs to include some limits on illumination.